Friday, 21 March 2014

They've made it to the final of the Idol Festival in Tokyo to stake their claim as an official rival of I-1 Club, but now the Wake Up Girls have to face up to the fact that none other than I-1 Club themselves have effectively pinched their best song.

Just as both group and management are pondering the ways they can detach the devious Hayasaku limb from limb, up pops the man himself to declare what he's been up to, which effectively comprises of making an even better song for Wake Up Girls to perform in the final to blow everybody away, and what's more this track will feature Yoppi as the group's centre. With just one month to prepare, it's time for another hard slog learning the song and its choreography to the point where Hayasaku is as happy with it as he's ever likely to be with anything.

With preparations complete, off we go to Tokyo alongside a decidedly nervous group of girls, none more so than Yoppi herself as they face up to the magnitude of both the city itself and their task at the I-1 Arena. It's clear who calls the shots here as I-1 Club get preferential treatment throughout, but the girls remain determined not to lose their focus - they might be about to lose something else however, as an accidental trip by Yoppi could put all of their hard work in jeopardy.

These recent episodes of Wake Up Girls certainly seem like a far cry from its early reckoning, with its cynical take on the idol market largely (although admittedly not completely) replaced with happy faces and near instant success for its titular group. It feels like an odd decision in one sense, although perhaps a narratively necessary one, but it has left the last couple of instalments of the series feeling like "just another idol show", albeit one without any decent production values to crow about. Perhaps its ending will have something insightful to say, but at the moment it looks like it might just be another "victory against the odds" fare to square the circle on the forced drama introduced in this episode.